


A Touch of the Devil

by BoldAsBrass



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Age Difference, Chair Bondage, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/M, First Time, M/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Orgasm Delay, Post-Canon, Sex Work, Threesome - F/M/M, Yassen Gregorovich Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-01 05:35:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoldAsBrass/pseuds/BoldAsBrass
Summary: Yassen Gregorovich likes to celebrate the successful end of an assignment with a wash, a drink and a woman. And having Alex tied up in his hotel room isn't about to change that.
Relationships: Alex Rider/Original Female Character, Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider, Yassen Gregorovich/Original Female Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 195





	1. Chapter 1

“I should have known it would be you,” Alex said wearily .

It had been a long day. He’d been minding his own business peeling potatoes in the kitchen at the _dacha_ when Nina’s boyfriend had walked in wanting to ‘have a word.’ He’d brought with him his much older, much larger, brother to make sure those words would register. Things had escalated and before Alex knew it the boyfriend had been wielding a kitchen cleaver, the brother a boning knife and he himself had been fending them off with a saucepan lid while wondering if it would be morally acceptable to shut them in the walk-in freezer.

In the end, the decision had been made for him. He’d registered a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see an M84 stun grenade land in the vegetable sink with a metallic clatter. The brothers had stared at it blankly while Alex dived to the floor. Then the world had exploded and everything had gone numb. In the temporary blindness and confusion that followed, he dimly registered being hoisted across someone’s shoulder, but he could no more have resisted than he could have fought off gravity. A minute later he’d been bundled into a car boot and there he had stayed in darkness as the car took off down the dirt track from the _dacha_ that led eventually onto the motorway.

When they finally pulled up it was dark and Alex’s legs were so cramped from their long confinement that he could barely stand, let alone fight. He’d been hauled unceremoniously from the boot and found himself standing in a parking lot surrounded by expensive looking SUVs. From the sound of aircraft overhead, he could tell they were close to a major airport. From the orange glow lighting the sky, it was an airport near a main city. From that, and the time of day he guessed they were probably on the outskirts of Moscow. That was all he managed to ascertain before the hooded figure beside him jabbed a gun into his ribs then marched him across the parking lot and through the side door of what turned out to be a fairly swanky hotel. Once in the room Alex had been pushed into a chair and secured to it by his wrists and ankles before his captor had finally deigned to pull back his hood.

“Is Berezin dead?” he continued.

Yassen looked up from where he was unpacking a sports bag, removing its contents in neat piles and stacking them onto the desk. He cut a very different figure from the neat blond man Alex had first seen emerging from a submarine tower almost four years ago. His hair was longer, a dull brown, curling around his ears and a full beard covered his face. What was visible of his skin was a dusty tan, whether from dirt, camouflage cream or sun exposure, Alex couldn’t tell. Only his eyes remained unaltered, a pale cool blue a shade warmer than arctic ice.

“What do you think?” he said.

“Great,” Alex muttered. “Just great.” Two weeks of the Easter break spent living in a bunk house and peeling potatoes for nothing.

Yassen’s shrug was almost imperceptible. “No one will miss him.”

“His family might.”

“No,” Yassen said, continuing unpacking. “I don’t think so.”

Alex thought of Alyona Berezina’s set white face and didn’t press further. There were some things in life it was best not to ask. “Did you know I was undertaking surveillance?”

Yassen unzipped his windbreaker before answering, revealing the pistol tucked into his waistband. His thermal top was muddy and stained, dark rings marking the fabric beneath the arms. “The new English kitchen porter who all the female staff were in love with? I had an idea.”

“They weren’t in love with me,” Alex said uncomfortably. Although he did feel bad about Nina. Whatever the future held for her, he hoped it was something better than Oleg Komarov.

Yassen cast him an oblique sideways look. Alex couldn’t read the expression lurking beneath the beard but there was a speculative gleam in his glance. An impression of words left unsaid.

“What?”

“‘Oh, he has such sad eyes,’” Yassen sighed in Russian. He removed the pistol from his waistband and ejected the magazine.

Alex didn’t answer. Partly out of irritation, partly because he was trying not to breathe in too deeply. With the windbreaker removed, Yassen smelled pretty strongly: a hot animal reek which suggested that the last few weeks hadn’t offered much in the way of washing facilities, or indeed deodorant. The hands laying out the pistol parts carefully onto the desk were begrimed, the nails dark rimmed with dirt. Whoever Yassen’s employer had been, they would have had to have paid pretty well to induce someone so fastidious to drop their standards so much.

Perhaps Yassen read his mind. He picked up a washbag from the desk and dropped the magazine into it. “I’m going for a shower,” he said, reverting to English. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Alex gave him an unimpressed look. “Ha-de-ha-ha,” he muttered. The cords around his wrists and ankles had been tied with expert care. It was going to take more than a few minutes to escape them.

Yassen went into the bathroom without answering. The door closed and water began to run. It ran for a long time. Long enough that Alex managed to work the knot on his right wrist round towards his thumb, but not long enough for him to work it lose. After ten minute’s exertion he paused to slacken the cords and let the blood return to his hand, staring around the hotel room in case there was anything there to assist him.

The room was large and furnished in a plush, slightly overstuffed Victorian style. It wasn’t to Alex’s taste but he had to admit it was a step up from the usual budget airport hotel. Old fashioned paintings of Russian rural life adorned the walls. A mirror in a heavy gilt frame hung over the desk. The bed was made up with expensive white linen and flanked by two side tables with identical brass lamps. A flat screen TV sat on top of a carved wooden chest of drawers in one corner. Farther along the wall a fridge hummed quietly. An insulated silver ice bucket, a carafe of water and a serving tray with crystal glasses sat on the shelf above it. Everything looked well-made and of good quality. The armchair Alex was tied to certainly was. Fashioned of sturdy beech wood with an old-fashioned ladder back it had so far resisted everything he could throw at it.

With a sigh he conceded temporary defeat and wondered what to do next. It would help if he knew why he had been brought here, but so far Yassen had proved unforthcoming. The pair of them were on opposite sides but they worked within the same field. Their paths still crossed on occasion and when they did they usually managed to work around each other. It was complicated: Yassen had killed Alex’s uncle; Yassen had taken a bullet for him. Those two truths remained in constant orbit, not cancelling one another out but creating a precarious balance. Their uneasy truce had held for years. Now, for whatever reason, Yassen had shifted the goalposts.

He was no closer to an answer by the time Yassen emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of fragrant steam, a white towel wrapped around his hips. Half an hour had wrought a transformation in him. He was scrubbed clean and freshly shaved. The dirt had been scoured from his nails and his skin, and his hair shone pale blond again.

Without speaking, he took a phone from his bag and checked the screen. A faint smile crossed his face. He placed the phone carefully on one of the side tables then went to open the fridge. This was Russia: they didn’t believe in miniatures. There was vodka by the bottle or the half bottle. Yassen took out a half bottle, added ice to his glass and poured himself a drink. Then he sat on the bed and took a long meditative sip. His eyelashes dipped and he sighed, reclining against the padded headboard and letting his head roll back as far as his neck allowed.

“I needed that,” he remarked. It wasn’t clear if he meant the drink or the shower.

Alex didn’t answer. This was the first time he had seen Yassen unclothed. The sight didn’t fill him with confidence. His long eyelashes and slight frame might lend him a disarmingly gentle appearance but the hard plains of his chest and stomach told their own story. This was another league entirely to the Komarov brothers. Yassen might be nearing forty, but it was clear he remained in excellent physical condition. Even unrestrained Alex would have to be very fast and very lucky to best him.

Fortunately, Yassen didn’t seem to expect a response. He cricked his neck to one side and then the other, his eyes roving restlessly around the room. Eventually they settled on Alex, pausing as if he had forgotten he was there. “Do you want a drink?”

He shook his head. “No.”

What he really wanted was a glass of water, or better yet an ice-cold Coke. But he was reluctant to place himself under any obligation before he knew what Yassen’s plans for him entailed. Yassen considered him wordlessly, circling the glass in his hand. Once again, Alex had the impression of powerful subterranean currents running just below the surface. With a lurch of apprehension, he realised that Yassen was almost certainly naked beneath his loosely tied towel. Was this why he had been abducted, he wondered uneasily. He’d never considered Yassen to be a sexual threat before. If asked, he’d have laughed and said the idea was ridiculous. Yassen was ascetic in his habits, too focussed on the job to be distracted by the pleasures of the flesh. But he’d never seen Yassen in this mood before either, mission accomplished and humming with restless energy. Demob happy, they called it in SAS training. A precarious time, when normally steady men could behave erratically.

He sank lower in the chair, doing his best to make himself unobtrusive. Now that the thought had occurred, it was difficult to dislodge. Yassen took another languid mouthful of vodka, the muscles flexing in his chest and arm. Alex watched, unpleasantly aware of his own vulnerability: trussed up like a chicken ready for the pot. Panic began to rise in his throat. With an effort he forced it down. Don’t think about it, he told himself fiercely. Yassen had always had an uncanny knack for reading his thoughts. But now the idea had arisen, unbidden images filled his mind, clustering thick and fast.

“Are you alright?” Yassen said abruptly. “Your face is red.”

“Room’s quite hot,” Alex muttered. Russian hotel rooms often were.

An insistent double beep broke the rising tension. Yassen picked up the phone and texted a brief message. “I have a friend coming by shortly,” he said as he replaced it onto the side table.

“You have a friend?” Alex interjected. For once he wasn’t being sarcastic. His head felt thick. A combination of the room’s dry heat, the aftereffects of the stun grenade, and his creeping sense of apprehension.

Yassen frowned faintly at the interruption. “If they ask, you will tell them everything is fine. If you don’t, it will go badly for them.”

He opened his mouth to object. That didn’t make sense. But before he could say anything more was a rap at the door. A woman’s voice came from outside, low but clear. “Petrov?” it said.

With a warning glance in his direction, Yassen went to answer it. “Please,” he said stepping aside and letting her enter.

Without further conversation, a woman in a dark blue dress walked into the room. Alex guessed she was in her late thirties with long dark hair that flowed smoothly down her back. A large silver-studded leather bag hung over her shoulder and her dress tied at the waist, emphasising the curve of her hips. In her shiny black heels, she stood an inch or two taller than Yassen.

“This is Lara,” Yassen said to Alex in Russian, and to the woman. “This is Alex, who I mentioned. He likes to watch, don’t you, Alex?”

The woman turned her head to glance at him, measuring the level of threat he presented with practised ease. She had a smooth oval face, dark eyes, bright red lips. Alex doubted her real name was Lara. He doubted her hair was naturally that dark. Everything about her was polished and shiny, from her lips, to her hair, to the tips of her perfectly lacquered nails. Her expression remained impassive, as though it was a perfectly normal occurrence for her to enter a hotel room and find a young man tied to a chair. Behind her back, Yassen’s eyes met his. This time Alex could read their message all too easily: play along or risk the consequences.

“Yeah,” he said slowly in Russian. “That’s what I like.”

Without speaking, she crossed the room and bent towards him. As she leaned forward, he caught a glimpse of black lace at her cleavage. He averted his eyes quickly but he couldn’t block out the gust of warm breath dampening the skin of his cheek or the scent of her perfume, something heady and floral bordering on overripe. Cool fingers touched his wrists and for a giddy moment he thought she was going to release him. But no, she was checking whether the knots were secure and adding a few more of her own.

“It will be another hundred for the friend,” she said to Yassen when she was content. There was a slight accent to her Russian which Alex couldn’t place.

He nodded unconcerned. “May I see first?”

With a faint shrug, she undid the tie at her waist. The dress fell open. Beneath, she was wearing a black satin basque which cinched in her waist and pushed up her breasts, matching black knickers and lace-topped stockings. Alex sat frozen in place, a bubble of nervous laughter rising in his throat. It was an outfit straight out of Playboy magazine, so stereotypically ‘sexy’ it was practically funny. Hey, Yassen, he thought with an edge of hysteria, the 1970s called, they want their pornography back. Black lace and makeup weren’t his thing. He liked girls his own age with clear glowing skin. Slim sporty girls, who wore vest tops and yoga pants.

But Yassen was unbothered about what Alex might think. He touched the lace at the top of the basque, tracing it over the swell of a breast. “Yes, this is good,” he murmured. “Leave it on.”

Her eyes were cool, completely professional. “Do you have something for me?”

“Of course.” He took an envelope from the sports bag and passed it to her. She counted the contents in front of him, a thick sheaf of American dollars. Alex watched, experiencing a barrage of mixed emotions: ignominious relief that it wasn’t, after all, his body that Yassen had amorous designs on; distaste for the commercial nature of the transaction; and growing discomfort at what was to come.

“I’ll go freshen up,” she said, when she was done, and taking the bag and envelope with her, disappeared into the bathroom.

“Are you kidding me?” he whispered fiercely once the door had shut and water had begun to run. “You’re planning to screw her while I’m in the room?”

Yassen picked up his glass then stretched out on the bed, back against the headboard. “And where else would you be?” he asked reasonably.

“The bathroom?” The thought wasn’t great, but it was better than the alternative.

Yassen circled the vodka in his glass, watching the last of the ice cubes dissolve. “I prefer having you where I can keep an eye on you.”

Alex gave a quiet disbelieving snort. If that was true, Yassen wouldn’t have left him alone while he showered. “You’re sick,” he muttered.

The insult earned him a raised eyebrow. “I have spent the last six weeks living in the woods, Alex: ticks, leeches, mosquitos. I promised myself when I was done I would have a hot shower, a cold drink and a good woman. Do you think I’m going to let you disrupt my plans?”

Alex glanced towards the bathroom where the running water had shut off. “I’m guessing not.”

“You’re guessing right. Look the other way if the idea bothers you so much.”

“I didn’t ask to be here,” he pointed out. “You could have left me back at the _dacha_.” He frowned. “In fact, why didn’t you leave me back at the _dacha_? Brand new member of staff, a foreigner? I’d have been the perfect fall guy.”

With an impatient gesture, Yassen picked up the remote control and flicked on the television, then rose from the bed and stalked across the room. Alex braced himself, half-expecting a cuff around the head for his insolence. But Yassen had other plans. He took hold of the armchair and pivoted on its rear legs so Alex was facing into the corner of the room, towards the TV. “Happy now?” he asked.

He wasn’t, but before he could express his discontent, Lara had opened the bathroom door. Turning his head as far as it would go, Alec saw she had taken off her dress but kept on the corsetry and and heels. She was holding a heart-shaped washbag in her right hand, the same pillar-box red as her lipstick. Seeing their eyes upon her, she paused, one hand on her waist, then walked towards them with a slow sway of her hips. If this was Yassen’s idea of a good woman, Alex didn’t want to know what a bad one would look like.

Yassen leaned on the back of the chair, his annoyance forgotten. “Would you like a drink?” he asked in Russian.

Alex rolled his eyes. Who said romance was dead?

She tossed the washbag onto the bed. “Please,” she said and passed behind them with a soft whisper of silk stockings. If she wondered why his chair was now facing away from the bed, then she didn’t care enough to ask why. Yassen followed, like a dog hoping for a bone, Alex thought cynically. He stared straight ahead, refusing to participate in whatever game it was Yassen was playing by turning to check out the rear view. He heard the fridge door open, the clink of ice, the glug of a bottle, then silence. He strained his ears, but he had no idea what was going on behind him. Were they drinking? Kissing? Touching? The only sound came from the television. It was showing a Russian crime drama, two women having an argument in a darkened warehouse. It sounded very tense. His Russian was sufficient to get by as a kitchen porter, not good enough to follow this much plot without subtitles.

“Let me help you with that,” Lara said.

There came the soft fall of fabric. Then the bed creaked. Another long pause. The sound of a zip. The washbag, he guessed, since Yassen was already undressed. Some rustling. Then another noise, slick and wet. A low sigh. He stared resolutely at the television. The scene had cut to an ultra-modern office. A man in a battered leather jacket was talking urgently into his mobile phone. How long was he going to be left sitting here, with his back to the room like a naughty schoolboy? How long did people in their thirties take to have sex? Twenty minutes? Longer? He hoped to God not longer. The room was hot and close; a cloying sweat was already beginning to gather at his temples.

“Yes,” Yassen murmured. “Slowly. Like that.”

Like what? Alex’s head turned as if of its own accord. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the discarded towel lying on the carpet, a single black shoe abandoned alongside it. But Yassen had positioned him adroitly. Restrained as he was, there was no way Alex could see behind him without dislocating his shoulder. The wet noises continued, slow and measured, punctuated by quiet sighs. He shook his head, trying to dispel the lurid images his mind was conjuring up. A flash of movement caught his eye and his gaze came to rest on the gilt framed mirror which hung on the back wall.

The bed was reflected back to him with a fidelity so perfect that the mirror’s positioning could not have been an accident. It had been hung there so the bed’s occupants could watch themselves if they wished. He looked before he could help himself. Yassen was naked, sitting propped against the headboard. Lara was lying curled on her side, her head level with his pelvis. She’d taken off her underwear but left the basque and stockings on. As he watched, she leaned across Yassen’s lap, her red mouth sinking onto his cock as her dark hair spilled over her shoulders to lie in a glossy pool across his thighs. Yassen’s head was bent. He had one hand wrapped in her hair and with the other he was fondling a scrap of silky fabric. Her underwear, Alex realised with a sudden shameful thrill. As he watched, Lara sank lower, all the way down, further than he would have thought possible, then slowly drew upwards, until only the head remained inside her warm mouth. A pause, a slow back and forth twist of her neck, then another long downwards slide. Alex sat motionless, blood pounding in his temples. He knew he should look away but it was as though his muscles had turned to jelly. He’d never- well, okay in videos, but nothing like this. He sat paralysed, staring into the mirror as his life depended on it.

Who knew how long he would have stayed frozen in place, his mouth hanging open, if a wicked blue gleam had not warned him that he had been found out? Yassen was watching him through thick fringed eyelashes, a slow smile spreading across his lips. Alex snatched his gaze away, but not before he had seen him lift the underwear to his face and inhale. Blushing furiously, he stared at the TV screen, doing his best to blot the lewd image from his mind. This was all wrong, he thought, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He liked girls his own age. Not black lace and lipstick. Not watching people old enough to be his parents have sex. Not watching _Yassen _have sex. On TV, the man in the leather jacket was driving at speed through a dark forest to a tight pounding soundtrack. Alex focussed his attention on it and did his best to ignore the hot ache in his balls, more turned on than he wanted to admit by the wet sucking noises coming from the bed.

His intentions might have been good but the television gods were not on his side. The music built to a dramatic crescendo then the programme cut to commercials.

“Now ride me,” Yassen said, into the silence.

Alex gripped the chair arms and pretended a profound interest in toothpaste commercials, but it was no good, the temptation to look was too great. This time, at least, his unwilling fascination passed unremarked. In the mirror he saw Lara straddled across Yassen’s hips and leaning towards him, blocking his view. The basque cinched in her waist, emphasising the soft curves of her shoulders and hips. The black straps of her stockings framed the smooth rounded globes of her backside. Yassen’s cock was jutting upwards beneath her spread thighs, rigid and a darker red somehow than Alex had expected. This really wasn’t his thing; he thought a little desperately as she reached beneath herself and guided Yassen inside her. His hands came up to cup her cheeks, running his fingers down the smooth crease which parted them, then pulling her in hard.

Alex remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe in case some tell-tale creak of his chair gave him away. He could see the muscles of her buttocks and thighs flexing, Yassen’s fingers kneading into their soft depths. His eyes moved as if of their own volition to the place where their bodies joined. Every time she lifted her hips he could see the glistening red folds of her sex, clasping around Yassen’s cock as it withdrew then disappearing again as Yassen thrust smoothly into her. In the videos Alex had watched, all the men had seemed to favour a jerky back and forth movement, their bodies jackhammering up and down along a single plane. This wasn’t like that. Yassen’s hips rolled with supple ease, moving as though they were oiled. Obviously all that working out wasn’t just good for killing people, Alex thought, on a rising bubble of hysteria. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. Sweat was beading on his upper lip and sliding from his armpits down his ribs. He could smell it, a thick animal heat, his body signalling its virility to anyone who might want to take pity on him. His cock was one long ache, his balls swollen and resentful at their continued neglect. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take before he creamed all over himself like an errant schoolboy.

Fortunately, Yassen was also growing impatient. His hand came up to catch Lara’s shoulder and he rolled them across the bed, so he was on top. Her black stockinged legs came up to wrap themselves around his body, her ankles locking around his back. Now Yassen began to thrust in earnest, the muscles of his backside flexing and hollowing urgently. There was something hypnotic about it, Alex thought, watching such a tightly controlled man giving himself over to pleasure. The tempo increased. The bed shook. Then Yassen’s body tightened and he gave a low guttural groan. A series of short tight strokes and it was over. For a few short moments there was silence, Yassen lying motionless while Lara stroked the back of his neck, then with practiced efficiency she disentangled them, picked up her washbag and made her way back into the bathroom. The door closed and they were alone.

To his relief Yassen didn’t speak at once. Instead he rolled onto his back, pulled a pillow beneath his head and scratched his chest lazily. He looked, Alex thought resentfully, the epitome of well fucked. Alex did not feel well fucked. Now the show was over his headache had returned four-fold; his wrists throbbed where the cords had chafed them; his skin itched and his own reek hung heavy in the air, thick and cloying. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the humiliating certainty that his presence had added to Yassen’s enjoyment. With a small sigh, Yassen levered himself onto his elbows. The skin of his torso was flushed pink, his normally well-behaved hair curled in damp ducktails around his face. His eyes sought out Alex’s in the mirror, knowing and amused, not a trace of guilt in their pale depths.

“Did you like that?” he asked.

A litany of insults rose to Alex’s lips. He suppressed them with difficulty. He didn’t have to look downwards to know there was a fat bulge in his underwear which his loose sweatpants were doing very little to conceal. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that any vehement denial would only serve to increase Yassen’s amusement tenfold. “Not as much as you, I suspect.”

The answering blink told him that for once he had managed to score a point. Fortunately, Lara reappeared before Yassen could level. She was dressed again, her bag slung over her shoulder. Her lipstick had faded, but other than that she looked the same as when she had first walked in the door: dress smooth and unwrinkled, stocking seams straight, not a single glossy hair out of place. If Alex hadn't seen her five minutes previously, pinned beneath Yassen's body, then he would never have believed it had happened.

She retrieved her shoes and slipped them on. “Will that be all?” she asked when she was done.

Grudgingly, Alex admired her poise. So exquisitely polite and so equally obviously not giving a damn. Not many people managed to match Yassen for cool self-possession, but she was doing a good job.

Yassen’s eyes travelled from Alex to her and back again. He pursed his lips as if in deep thought. “I will give you another hundred if you see to my friend.”

The world lurched on its axis. “That’s not-” he began before Yassen’s eyes met his in silent rebuke and he subsided into silence.

Lara circled the chair, staring down at him with impassive eyes. Alex met her gaze sheepishly, acutely aware of the spectacle he must present. Bound, dishevelled, his T-shirt clinging to his damp torso. Very visibly turned on. Without speaking, she crouched and undid the drawstring at his waist, slipping her fingers beneath the waistband of his shorts and pulling them down to his knees along with his sweatpants. Released from its confinement, his cock sprang free and pointed proudly towards the ceiling.

She raised a dark eyebrow. “How old are you anyway?” she said, addressing him for the first time.

Alex hesitated. Was this a way out of it? But Yassen was lying on the bed behind them, listening in to every word. “Eighteen,” he admitted.

Was she surprised? He couldn’t tell. She took him between forefinger and thumb, working along his shaft from the mass of tawny curls at its base to its wet red head, pressing lightly every inch or so as though appraising its length and girth. “A hundred, then,” she said over her shoulder.

Once the money had been passed over, counted and safely tucked away she took a packet of wet wipes from her bag and wiped Alex down with quick efficient movements. Not just his cock and balls but his thighs, his stomach, even into the hidden crevice between his legs. The cloth was cool against his fevered skin, soft and wet and the touch made him twitch in helpless anticipation even as his face reddened at the implication that she felt it was necessary.

His reaction didn’t go unremarked. “Wait until you feel her mouth,” Yassen advised. He rose from the bed, tied the towel around his waist and went to pour himself a glass of water.

Alex did his best to ignore him. His eyes were on Lara. She had taken a compact from her bag and was reapplying her lipstick in smooth practised sweeps, painting her mouth red and glossy again. As she leaned forward, he caught a sudden distracting view of her cleavage spilling from the front of her dress. Her breasts were heavy and full, the basque pushing them upwards as though presenting them for his perusal. That was the point he realised, and all at once he saw the appeal.

Yassen returned, glass in hand to lean against the desk, positioning himself so he had a good view of proceedings. “Be gentle with him,” he said to Lara, “it’s his first time.”

With an effort, Alex tore his fascinated gaze away from her breasts. “It’s not!” he said hotly.

To his chagrin both of them laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Yassen said. “It’s not. He’s very experienced.” His mouth hardened slightly. “Make him sweat.”


	2. Chapter 2

Without replying, Lara leaned forward and Alex caught again the sultry drift of her perfume. It reminded him of peaches and hot summer days. With one blunt plum-coloured fingernail she traced slowly over the seam of his balls, then up and along the underside of his shaft. As she reached the tip, his cock jumped urgently. She toyed with the foreskin, then teased her fingernails across the swollen red crown, sending pulses of sensation racing along his nerves. He did his best to hold still, acutely aware of Yassen’s scrutiny, praying he wouldn’t disgrace himself before she had even taken him into her mouth.

Now she wrapped her fingers around the shaft, drawing him towards her open red lips as hot air from her breath flowed slowly over the sensitive head. His cock twitched for a second time, wetness gathering at the tip, his body reacting involuntarily to the maddening caress. Was that a trace of professional pride on her face at his obvious excitement? If so, it was gone in a flash. She leaned forward and her tongue swiped across the throbbing head, teasing it wetly. Alex sucked in a breath; he’d thought he’d had blowjobs before. As soon as her mouth closed around him, engulfing him in warm wet pressure, he realised he hadn’t had anything close. He took a harder grip of the chair handles and his eyelids flickered closed, giving himself over to the hot, insistent tugging. No wonder Yassen had looked so smug.

“Nice view, isn’t it?” a soft voice said in his ear. Alex’s eyes flew open in sudden alarm. Too late, he remembered that it was rarely a good idea to let Yassen Gregorovich out of your line of sight. He had used Alex’s moment of inattention to take up position behind his chair, his forearms resting along the top rail.

“Don’t,” he said trying to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t see Yassen’s face, but he could feel the vodka heat of his breath brushing against his cheek and smell the salt tang of his skin. The hot musky scent of a healthy male animal.

“I’m not hurting you,” Yassen said reasonably. “I just want to watch.” He rested his chin on his arm and gazed with interest down Alex’s torso. Alex’s eyes followed his involuntarily and he swallowed at the sight of Lara kneeling between his spread thighs: dark silky hair flowing over her shoulders, lowered eyelashes, red mouth circling his cock. Yassen was right, seeing his shaft buried between her lips increased the sensations tenfold.

“You know what would make it even better?” Yassen murmured.

Lara began massaging the base of his cock as she sucked rhythmically, her dark head bobbing up and down. Nothing, Alex thought dazedly. Nothing could make it better. He was barely holding out as it was. “No.”

“This.” Yassen reached an arm over his shoulder and caught the hem of Alex’s T-shirt, pulling it up to his chin. “Isn’t that a pretty sight?”

Alex stared down at his revealed torso. It took a moment to gather his scattered thoughts. For all its scars and imperfections, his body didn’t displease him: more of a swimmer’s build than a rugby player’s, still he had a strong chest with clearly defined pectorals, a scatter of hair between them, muscular shoulders, a flat stomach. But for all that, he wasn’t sure he would call himself pretty. “What?” he managed intelligibly.

“This,” Yassen clarified. His index finger sketched a line between Alex’s pectoral muscles, along his ribs, down his torso to his belly button, then back up to circle the hard points of his nipples. Touching them maddeningly lightly, as if he knew how sensitive they were.

Alex shifted in his seat. The unexpected contact sent an electric pulse racing down his spine, adding to the building pressure in his pelvis. “What are you doing?” he said, an edge of panic lining his words.

“I’m not hurting you,” Yassen said, quiet and reasonable, as though this was a perfectly normal state of affairs. He leaned further forward, tracing his fingers along Alex’s chest muscles before capturing a tight brown nipple between his fingers and rolling it carefully between forefinger and thumb.

Alex jerked and tried to pull away, but he was held fast in his restraints. Somewhere in the back of his lust-addled brain, several unanswered questions about Yassen Gregorovich were beginning to resolve themselves. He could buy that a straight man might enjoy another man watching in impotent frustration as he received a blow job. He could buy - just - that a straight man might enjoy watching another man _receiving_ a blow job. But no man took this much obvious pleasure in another man’s body without rather more skin in the game. What he did with this piece of intelligence, he wasn’t currently in a position to judge.

“That’s not the point,” he managed on a harsh explosion of breath. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Yassen asked. “This?” He flicked one stiff nipple. “Or this?” He tweaked the other.

“Either,” Alex snapped as his hips ground down on the chair, trying to ease the gathering ache in his groin. It was only his nipples, he thought wildly. It shouldn’t be turning him on this much. “Both.”

“Why?” Yassen wanted to know. He tweaked again with careful fingertips, calibrating the exact pressure needed to make Alex twist against his restraints. “What will happen if I don’t?”

He panted wordlessly, furious with himself for responding but unable to stop. It wasn’t fair. No one else had ever managed to touch him the right way. They were either too tentative, scared of hurting him, or too rough, acting as though they were trying to twist his nipples off. Or worst of all, they’d stop just when things were getting good. Why did Yassen have to be the one who got it exactly right? A maddening rhythmic tweaking, gentle but insistent, driving him gradually to distraction. He could feel the heat building in his pelvis, a familiar tingle spreading down his legs. It wouldn’t be long now. The slightest extra stimulation was going to push him over the edge.

Sensing his growing distraction, Yassen tapped him reprovingly on the collar bone. “Tell the lady when you’re close.”

“I’m close,” he confessed.

At once, Yassen stopped. So did Lara, pulling away and leaving him bereft. He slumped onto the chair, his cock bobbing up and down as if on a spring, a wild staccato jerking, desperate to return to the warm embrace of her mouth.

“Again,” Yassen said at last when the jerking had subsided into an occasional beseeching twitch.

This time she took him in hand, her wet, hot tongue lashing the throbbing head of his cock. A trickle of perspiration ran between Alex’s pectorals as he writhed and twisted beneath her cruel, teasing lips. The pressure began to mount, even faster than before. He endured another four agonising seconds. “So close,” he gasped.

Lara pulled away. “How long since you last came?” she asked. Her fingertips brushed over the sensitive skin of his balls with professional interest, assessing their weight, their heat, their tightness.

He rolled his head against the back of the chair, too far gone to lie. “Yesterday,” he admitted. Furtively in the shower block during the morning break.

“Oh, to be eighteen again,” Yassen observed. “Once more. Slowly. Take him to the edge.”

The velvet heat of her mouth enclosed him with a smooth firm suction, while Yassen plucked at his nipples in time with the hollowing of her cheeks. Alex writhed, his hips bucking helplessly. The two of them were performing a duet on his body, playing him like a violin. He didn’t stand a chance. He bore down desperately onto the hard, wooden seat. His nipples were so tight. All the sensitive nerve endings gathered into a few scant millimetres. He wanted someone to nip them. Pinch them. Make them sting. “Please,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “oh, please, please, please.”

“You want to come?” Yassen inquired, as though the issue might still be in doubt.

He twisted in the chair, the muscles in his stomach working as his hips arched off the seat. “Yes!”

“Where?”

“What?” He wanted to sob in frustration. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His heart pounding in his chest as if it would burst. They’d won. They’d beaten him. Why was he still being asked questions?

“Where do you want to come? In her mouth? On your stomach? In my hand?”

Alex gave a despairing groan. But even in his desperate state he knew there could be only one response. Yassen was directing this show. Alex and Lara were only actors in his private fantasy. “Whatever you want. Whatever you think is best.”

Teeth closed on his earlobe, a small sting, quickly soothed with the swipe of a tongue. It was the right answer. “On his stomach; let me see it.”

Lara leaned in so they could see her cleavage and began jerking Alex with hard demanding strokes of her fist. If she had been teasing before, now she was all business, and her business was making him come as hard and as fast as was possible. He could see her breasts swaying as she worked him, jiggling with the movements of her arm. He stared in fascination at their plush curves, the deep valley between them, and was unable to hold back any longer. With a deep groan, he shot all over his chest. And hidden in the downy cleft between his cheeks a small tight muscle pulsed too, in shameful secret delight.

* * *

He fell into a half-sleeping, half-waking stupor for an unknown amount of time. When he eventually roused, his head was throbbing painfully and his mouth was dry.

“Here.”

A hand in his hair pulled up his chin from his chest, and a glass of water was placed to his lips. He drank thirstily, then looked about. Lara was gone, the only sign of her presence a lipstick marked glass on a side table and the faint lingering scent of peaches. Yassen was standing beside him, dressed in a black roll neck sweater, jeans and a beige trench coat. His hair had been styled into a smooth side-parting and slicked back with pomade. He looked like one of Moscow’s fashionable urbanites, a member of the creative industries perhaps, a far cry from the rugged backwoodsman who had walked into the hotel a few hours earlier.

“Going somewhere?” Alex asked dully.

“I have a flight to catch.”

Of course, he realised. Yassen would never risk spending the night in the hotel, where the abandoned car, or the hotel staff, or Lara might identify him and link him to Berezin’s death. This was just a quick stopover. A chance to freshen up and indulge in some R&R before boarding his flight and vanishing from view.

“Right,” he said.

A rapid blink greeted this response. Yassen’s eyes tracked over his face, something about Alex’s answer seeming to perplex him. “Did you want me to stay?”

Stay? Finish what he had started? A series of forbidden images flashed across his mind. On the bed. Arm twisted behind his back. Yassen naked and hard and- “No.”

Yassen replaced the empty glass onto the desk. “Well, I’m not.”

“Okay.” He knew he should feel relief. It should be what he wanted. It _was_ what he wanted. But still he felt illogically resentful: sticky and sweaty and used. Good enough for an hour’s entertainment but not for anything more. “She didn’t enjoy it, you know,” he said. “She did it for money.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Yassen said gravely. “I thought she did it for love.”

Alex scoffed wordlessly and avoided his gaze. Not for the first time that evening he was left feeling foolish. Callow and unsophisticated. Utterly out of his depth.

Yassen considered him as though debating whether to say more, then crouched before the armchair, his expression serious. “I will let you into a little secret. I don’t really enjoy killing people. But I am very good at it and it pays well.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s more the same thing than you think.” He flicked Alex’s jaw with his finger, then rose to his feet. “You don’t get to have a loving partner in this game, Alex. If this is the life that you have chosen, then this is the life you will have.”

He shook his head wearily. It was too much to deal with and his head still ached. Besides, there were more urgent matters to worry about. “Aren’t you going to untie me, now you’ve had your fun?”

“No.” Yassen paused in front of the mirror and straightened his coat collar. “House-keeping will find you in the morning, if you can’t escape by then.”

“You can’t leave me like this,” Alex protested. It wasn’t a plea, exactly, but it was fast approaching one. MI6 had recovered him from some sticky situations in the past but this was something new: trousers around his ankles; lipstick marks on his cock; and his seed streaked all over his chest. There was no way to explain this away as something other than what it was. “They’ll never let me out on operation again.”

Yassen flicked a piece of fluff from his lapel. “Not necessarily a bad thing.”

“So, this is goodbye, then,” he said. His mind raced, trying to work out the implications. Would MI6 still come to his assistance? Would they fly him home? He’d always assumed his intelligence career would be brought to a premature end by a bullet, or a ball of flame, not through an ignominious sex scandal. Tom would probably be impressed; Jack, less so.

The words earned him a sidelong glance. Yassen smoothed his hair then adjusted his cuffs as he considered them. “Fine,” he said at last. “I am a reasonable person. I will give you a head start.”

Alex didn’t see the knife; he just felt the cords around his left wrist slacken. One down, three to go, he thought wryly, shaking his hand to get the blood flowing again. Without speaking, Yassen took something from his pocket and dropped it into his lap. It fell with a flutter onto his thigh then slithered to the floor before he could catch it.

“What’s this?” he said, before he realised what the black scrap of satin and lace must be.

“A souvenir.” Yassen lifted his bag onto his shoulder and headed for the door. “Happy birthday.”

Alex stared after his retreating figure. “But that was weeks ago,” he said.

Yassen paused to look over his shoulder. His eyes were only a shade warmer than arctic ice, but a devilish blue glint shone in their depths. “_My_ birthday,” he said, and slipped from the room before Alex could think of a response.


End file.
